Dorm Living for Professionals Comes to San Francisco<br />SAN FRANCISCO — In search of reasonable rent, the middle-class backbone of San Francisco — maitre d’s, teachers, bookstore managers, lounge musicians, copywriters<br />and merchandise planners — are engaging in an unusual experiment in communal living: They are moving into dorms.<br />Shared bathrooms at the end of the hall and having no individual kitchen or living room is becoming less weird for some of the city’s workers thanks to Starcity, a new development company<br />that is expressly creating dorms for many of the non-tech population.<br />“I never thought I could live like this,” Ms. Shiver said.<br />Because of arcane permitting rules and neighborhood associations<br />that push against new developments, building new housing in San Francisco is painfully slow.<br />“You don’t need to do that in your own unit alone, so why pay for it?”<br />Mr. Dishotsky grew up in Palo Alto, Calif., where housing prices have soared and the median home value is now more than $3 million.
